Heidi MacDonald is a party girl. Despite both industry and her own best efforts, comics seem to be in her blood. She can't stay away from reporting on them or editing them. Currently heading up Comicon's journalistic efforts, especially with her 'The Beat' gossip diary column, she's been involved in The Comics Journal, Disney, DC Cartoon Network and DC Vertigo, working on titles such as Transmetropolitan, Midnight, Mass and Y: The Last Man. She's also first at the bar and can remain standing when even Jimmy Palmiotti is sucking gravel. She was a hardline comics activist before Warren Ellis had even started his Delphi Forum, Ninth Art wasn't even a holding page and the reason you couldn't get anything at Savant's web address because no one had thought of it yet. She co-founded Friends Of Lulu, an outreach organisation to get women and children interested in reading comics. She's also a repeat member of the Dude Ranch outings, where comic industry people meet to drink and shoot things, and she's the rumour columnist that rumour columnists read. And so much more.

Right, is that the arse kissing over with? Good. Next. Heidi, will you please put Rob Liefeld down and come and talk to me? Thanks.

RICHARD JOHNSTON: Let's get this straight. Comics journalist to Disney, to DC to comics journalist again. Are you some sort of masochist?

 

Y: THE LAST MAN - UNMANNED TPB

HEIDI MACDONALD: Obviously. But actually writing was always my first love. I got into editing at magazines mostly to pursue writing. When I stopped editing comics I got a second chance to see what I wanted to be when I grew up, and journalism really comes very naturally to me. That turned out to be something that I'm very good at, so why not get paid to do something you're comfortable doing? Plus, as an editor I was only dealing with a specific little world.as a journalist I get to muck around in whatever I want, and that really suits my temperament.

RICHARD: Tell us about your temperament. The reason you got fired from Vertigo?

HEIDI: I prefer to say "ejected," RICHARD. What can I say, things didn't work out, and DC wasn't a very good environment for me. The day I started I realized I was never going to learn anything while I worked there, and I was proven correct. But that said, I don't have any hard feelings against Paul Levitz or Karen Berger or anyone there. There were definitely misunderstandings on a lot of fronts. I just chalk it up to experience.

RICHARD: And is going from Cartoon Network editor to Vertigo editor a common career path? Isn't it a bit like going from Noddy to Hellraiser?

HEIDI: Yeah, that was a weird switch for sure. But Joan Hilty did the reverse commute - I like to think of her as my "evil" twin, and she's done very well at it, as well she should, because she's a very smart cookie. It is odd in that when I was doing kids books for Disney and WB, I was very, very sensitive to what was or wasn't allowable, and probably a lot more PC than anyone would ever suspect. Vertigo, obviously is a lot more freewheeling on the face of it, but it was fun to cut loose for once.

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